Rufus
E Miles Jr. is a former senior fellow of the Woodrow
Wilson School, Princeton University, and a former
thirty-year career official of the U.S.
government.

OF all the political and military decisions in history,
few have been subject to more analysis and comment than the
atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is mystifying,
therefore, that historians have not long ago exploded the
demonstrable myth that those attacks probably saved half a
million lives of American soldiers, sailors, and marines,
and prevented numerous British fatalities and vast numbers
of Japanese deaths, as President Truman alleged in his
autobiography a decade after the war's end.[1]

Such a justification was neither needed nor used by
President Truman in the weeks immediately following the
obliteration of Hiroshima, followed within days by the
surrender of Japan, since the public overwhelmingly approved
of the action. As time went by, however, and questions were
increasingly asked about the necessity and wisdom of
launching the age of nuclear weapons in this manner,
estimates of deaths averted were adduced as an important
element -- perhaps the most important element -- of the
moral justification for Truman's decision.

By the time historians were given access to the secret
files necessary to examine this subject with care, the myth
of huge numbers of American, British, and Japanese lives
saved had already achieved the status of accepted history.
Even when secret wartime documents were declassified,
historians did not focus on the striking inconsistencies
between these documents and those parts of the principal
decision-makers' memoirs that dealt with estimates of lives
saved. Had they done so, and followed the subject where it
led, they would have been forced to conclude that the number
of American deaths prevented by the two bombs would almost
certainly not have exceeded 20,000 and would probably have
been much lower, perhaps even zero.

Four days after 70,000 -- 80,000 citizens of Hiroshima
died from the atomic bomb blast on August 6, 1945 and many
thousands more were injured, and one day after half as many
residents of Nagasaki met a similar fate, the Japanese
communicated to the United States their urgent desire to
surrender, subject only to the condition that they might
keep their Emperor. On the next day, the United States
accepted that condition with the stipulation that, until
total demilitarization had been achieved and other Allied
demands had been met, "the authority of the Emperor and the
Japanese Government to rule the state shall be subject to
the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers."[2]
Three days later, on August 14, Japan accepted the
stipulation, and the war was over. Understandably, the
American people were euphoric that the most devastating war
in history had ended. Not surprisingly, they gave principal
credit to the new weapon.

A Fortune magazine poll taken two months after Japan's
capitulation showed that less than 5 percent of Americans,
as a matter of principle, disapproved of the military use of
a bomb a thousand times as powerful as any of its
predecessors.[3]
Some 22 percent, still seething over the infamous "sneak"
attack on Pearl Harbor, wished that more such bombs had been
quickly dropped before the Japanese had a chance to
surrender. Nevertheless, an articulate minority, deeply
concerned over the possibility of a world armed with atomic
weapons, began to raise questions about the decision to drop
the bombs. At the same time, some of Truman's advisers, most
notably Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, the overseer of
the Manhattan Project that developed the fission bombs, felt
the need for a fuller explanation and justification for the
first use of these bombs than simply the quick end of the
war. Had the bombs not been used, Stimson strongly implied
in the February 1947 issue of Harper's, a massive and costly
invasion of Japan would have been necessary. In his
words:

We estimated that if we should be forced to
carry this plan [to invade first Kyushu and then
Japan's main island of Honshu] to its conclusion, the
major fighting would not end until the latter part of
1946, at the earliest. I was informed that such
operations might be expected to cost over a million
casualties, to American forces alone. Additional large
losses might be expected among our allies, and of course,
if our campaign was successful and if we could judge by
previous experience, enemy casualties would be much
larger than our own.[4]

Stimson's estimate of the consequences of what he implied
was the only effective alternative to the use of the bomb
thus became the main reference point for the rest of the
1940s and, as a result, has been influential ever
since.[5]
Neither in the Harper's article nor in his autobiography,
published later in 1947, did Stimson divulge any specific
source of this forbidding estimate of casualties or when and
how it had been calculated. It was simply implied that the
casualty projections had been thoughtfully and carefully
arrived at within the War Department.

Six years later, Winston Churchill described in his
memoirs the mutual massacre that he imagined was avoided by
the unforgettable flight of the "Enola Gay" over Hiroshima
and the instantaneous destruction of the city:

I had in my mind the spectacle of Okinawa
island, where many thousands of Japanese, rather than
surrender, had drawn up in line and destroyed themselves
by hand-grenades after their leaders had solemnly
performed the rite of hara-kiri. To quell the Japanese
resistance . . . might well require the loss of a million
American lives and half that number of British. . . . Now
all this nightmare picture had vanished. In its place was
the vision -- fair and bright indeed it seemed -- of the
end of the whole war in one or two violent shocks. . . .
To avert a vast, indefinite butchery, to bring the war to
an end, to give peace to the world, to lay healing hands
upon its tortured peoples by a manifestation of
overwhelming power at the cost of a few explosions,
seemed, after all our toils and perils, a miracle of
deliverance.[6]

Both men thus presented the issue as if the sole
practical alternative to the use of atomic bombs was an
immense, long, and bloody invasion of the heartland of
Japan, but neither provided any support for this belief.
They apparently assumed that this premise would be accepted
without question, and it was, even though it was severely
flawed. Where the statements differ is that Churchill
pictures a million American deaths, while Stimson had
mentioned a million American casualties, implying, on the
basis of Pacific experience, a fifth as many deaths.
(Casualties include injured and temporarily missing.) This
discrepancy led me to search for its origin and, in doing
so, to find much more than the careless and imprecise use of
terms and figures.

The purpose of the analysis that follows is to show that,
if a decision had been taken not to use the atomic bomb,
there were three non-nuclear strategies, each of which was
considered in some degree by President Truman and his
military and civilian advisers, and all three of which could
have been tried, seriatim, with an extremely high
probability of success and with a relatively small number of
deaths. The first, in fact, might have achieved its purpose
with no fatalities at all. A fourth alternative -- the
massive invasion of Honshu if all else failed -- will be
shown to have been clearly unrealistic; furthermore, there
is a compelling case that, even if it had occurred, the
number of American deaths would have been nowhere near half
a million. The following analysis of the four courses of
action seeks to understand why Truman, Churchill, and
Stimson used grossly exaggerated figures in their memoirs.
The use of the atomic bombs must have been based largely on
other considerations than the saving of huge numbers of
American lives. Yet the myth persists that this was the most
important factor in the decision.

Strategy Number One: A Negotiated
Peace

In the spring of 1945, evidence mounted that the capacity
of the Japanese air force to defend its homeland against
escalating bombardment had rapidly deteriorated. This
information, accompanied by a sharp drop in losses of
American planes and pilots, convinced Acting Secretary of
State Joseph Grew that the Japanese would be open to a
negotiated peace. Grew believed that the Japanese were so
nearly beaten by the end of May 1945 that there was an
excellent chance that they would capitulate soon thereafter
if the unconditional surrender doctrine Truman had inherited
from Roosevelt were publicly interpreted by Truman to allow
retention of the Japanese Emperor -- the revered symbol of
the thousand-year-old Japanese dynasty. Grew was the only
official of Cabinet status or of high military rank with
access to the President who had had lengthy experience in
Japan (ten years as U.S. Ambassador there) and thus was able
to assess the attitudes of Japan's ruling group. Grew sought
to persuade Truman of his views on May 28, three weeks after
V-E Day.[7]

The timing was propitious in Grew's judgment since B-29s
were causing enormous devastation throughout Japan. On March
29 they had rained incendiaries on Tokyo, killing and
injuring more Japanese (83,000), it was later estimated,
than did the Hiroshima bomb (70,000 -- 80,000). By the end
of May, virtually all major Japanese cities had been
attacked with incendiaries, disastrously impairing Japan's
capacity to carry on the war.[8]
Truman, then President for only a month and a half, was
impressed by Grew's arguments but thought it best to have
him discuss his proposals with the Secretaries of War and
the Navy and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Grew did so on the
following day, May 29.

By coincidence, on the same day on which Grew met with
Truman, Harry Hopkins, Roosevelt's trusted international
trouble-shooter, who had been called out of retirement by
Truman to improve worsening relations with Stalin, was
meeting in Moscow with the Soviet leader. Hopkins cabled
Truman that "Japan is doomed and the Japanese know it. Peace
feelers are being put out by certain elements in Japan and
we should therefore consider together our joint attitude and
act in concert about the surrender of Japan."[9]

Grew's recommendation did not, however, come as a new
idea to those present. The Joint Chiefs had been presented a
month earlier with a report from their planning staff that
contained the following statement: "The concept of
'unconditional surrender' is foreign to the Japanese nature.
Therefore, unconditional surrender' should be defined in
terms understandable to the Japanese who must be convinced
that destruction or national suicide is not implied. This
could be done at the governmental level by a 'declaration of
intentions' which would tell the Japanese what their future
holds. Once convinced of the inevitability of defeat, it is
possible that a government could be formed that would sign
and could enforce a surrender instrument."[10]

Secretary of War Stimson and Secretary of the Navy James
Forrestal seemed especially receptive to such a "declaration
of intentions," but not eager to issue it immediately for
reasons that were not clear to Grew. Stimson, almost totally
preoccupied with the diplomatic and military implications of
the atomic bomb, scheduled for test in early to mid-July,
had been discussing the use of the bomb with Truman,
including the probable need to make a crucial decision
during the Potsdam meeting in late July. If the declaration
of intentions were to be delayed until the bomb became a
tested military weapon, the Japanese might be warned of its
power while simultaneously being assured that "unconditional
surrender" did not mean an end to the sovereignty of their
nation or of their imperial dynasty. Because of the extreme
secrecy of the "S-1 " -- the code for the atomic bomb --
Stimson could not reveal his reasons for counseling
delay.[11]

Within the Department of State, there was less agreement
than there was in the War Department over the idea of
redefining the unconditional surrender doctrine. Assistant
Secretaries Dean Acheson and Archibald MacLeish argued
against any change in the Roosevelt doctrine of total
surrender, not only because they felt sure it would be very
unpopular with the American public, but because they took a
dim view of the Emperor and regarded him as having been a
tool of the infamous Premier Tojo and his military clique,
and even as a possible subject of war crimes prosecution.
Both saw him as a stumbling block to the development of
genuine democracy in Japan.[12]
Despite this opposition, Grew, with the support of his Far
East expert, Eugene Dooman, persisted in his efforts. Yet he
was to be disappointed. On the morning of June 18, Truman
met with Grew and indicated that, while he was favorable to
the idea of issuing a declaration of intentions to the
Japanese to reassure them on the matter of their long-term
sovereignty, he had decided to wait until the Potsdam
conference a month later and issue it as a joint
proclamation.[13]

On the afternoon of the same day, President Truman held a
meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Secretaries Stimson
and Forrestal, and Assistant Secretary of War John McCloy to
help prepare himself for the Potsdam conference. He wanted
to be briefed on the invasion plan that the War Department
had prepared for an assault on Kyushu, Japan's southern
island, scheduled for November I . Toward the end of the
discussion, Admiral William Leahy, the President's personal
chief of staff, recommended modification of the
unconditional surrender doctrine. The minutes of that
meeting record the following exchange:

"Admiral Leahy said he could not agree with
those who said to him that unless we obtain the
unconditional surrender of the Japanese that we will have
lost the war. He feared no menace from Japan in the
foreseeable future, even if we were unsuccessful in
forcing unconditional surrender. What he did fear was
that our insistence on unconditional surrender would
result only in making the Japanese desperate and thereby
increasing our casualty lists. He did not think this was
at all necessary.

"The President stated that it was with this thought in
mind that he had left the door open for Congress to take
appropriate action with reference to unconditional
surrender. However, he did not feel that he could take
any action at this time to change public opinion on this
matter."[14]

By July -- the month of the Potsdam conference with
Truman, Churchill, and Stalin -- the momentum of Japan's
peace party developed very much as Grew had predicted. On
July 12, Foreign Minister Togo, at the Emperor's behest,
instructed the Japanese Ambassador in Moscow, Naotake Sato,
to inform Foreign Commissar Molotov that the Emperor wanted
the war ended immediately and wished to send Prince Fuminare
Konoye to Moscow with power to negotiate a peace on almost
any terms, presumably short of the unacceptable sacrifice of
the imperial dynasty. Ambassador Sato was rebuffed in his
efforts to gain the cooperation of the Soviet Union as an
intermediary, in large part because the Soviets were not
eager to have Japan surrender before the U.S.S.R. could
carry out its agreement, made at Yalta, to enter the war
against Japan and claim its share of the
spoils.[15]
On the next day, July 13, three days before the successful
atomic test at Alamogordo, New Mexico, naval intelligence
monitors intercepted and decoded the cables between Foreign
Minister Togo in Tokyo and Ambassador Sato in Moscow. They
read, in part:

Togo to Sato: "See Molotov before his departure
for Potsdam. Convey His Majesty's strong desire to secure
a termination of the war. . . . Unconditional surrender
is the only obstacle to peace. . . .

Sato to Togo: "There is no chance whatsoever of
winning the Soviet Union to our side and of obtaining her
support on the basis set forth in your cables. . . .
Japan is defeated. . . . We must face the fact and act
accordingly. . . . "[16]

Lewis Strauss, then special assistant to Secretary of the
Navy Forrestal, recalled later[17]
that Admiral Redman, Chief of Naval Communications, brought
him these intercepted messages on July 13, and that
subsequent intercepts grew more desperate. Strauss said that
as fast as they were received Forrestal sent them to Admiral
Leahy, who was then with Truman in Potsdam. Forrestal had
not been invited to attend the Potsdam conference but
finally decided to go anyway, carrying with him the file of
decoded messages, the last of which was dated July 25.
Mentioning the imminence of a complete collapse, it
instructed Ambassador Sato to go to any place that Molotov
might designate, and while still maintaining "unconditional
surrender" to be unacceptable, to state that Japan had "no
objection to a peace based on the Atlantic
Charter."[18]

Immediately on Forrestal's arrival in Potsdam on July 28,
he took the messages to the new Secretary of State, James F.
Byrnes, who saw them "in detail" for the first time,
although he had previously known of their existence and
presumably the thrust of their content. In Strauss's words,
"Forrestal was too late by forty-eight hours. The Potsdam
Declaration -- the ultimatum to Japan -- had been dispatched
on the twenty-sixth, and events were now in the saddle,
riding the decision-makers."[19]
On the very day Forrestal and Byrnes were talking, Japan
characterized the ultimatum with a unique Japanese word,
mokusatsu, meaning "not worth of reply. "[20]
Although the ultimatum reassured the Japanese that they
would remain a sovereign nation, it failed to assure them
that they might keep their Emperor, and it promised stern
justice to all war criminals. No mention was made of the
atomic bomb.

Five days later, there was one last intercept. "The
battle situation has become acute," it said, and concluded,
"Since the loss of one day relative to this present matter
may result in a thousand years of regret, it is requested
that you immediately have a talk with Molotov.
"[21]

After the successful test of the atomic bomb on July 16,
President Truman and his advisers felt sure that they had
the means to end the war quickly without any concessions to
or negotiations with Japan. And the Soviets had every reason
to want to carry out their pledge to enter the war on or
about August 8, thus staking out a share of the credit for
the Pacific victory and the division of power in its
aftermath. Upon Japan's rejection of the Allied ultimatum,
the dynamics of the situation seemed to the decision-makers
clearly to favor the prompt use of the new weapon.

As soon as Japan rejected the Allied demand on July 28,
the Air Force had its green light. The Hiroshima bomb was
dropped on August 6. The Soviet Union, as promised, declared
war on Japan on August 8. The Nagasaki bomb was released on
August 9. Japan sued for surrender on August 10, on the
condition that they could keep their Emperor. The United
States accepted Japan's conditional surrender on August 11,
with certain stipulations. Three days later, Japan agreed to
the stipulations. The war was over.

The Grew strategy, which had envisioned a successful
American diplomatic effort to end the war by an offer and
acceptance of a "conditional surrender" (the same condition
that became the accepted basis for surrender in August) by
the end of July, was subsequently considered by several
people to have had more than an outside possibility of
success. Among those who thought so in retrospect, in
addition to Grew himself, were Hanson Baldwin, military
analyst for The New York Times, and Robert J.C. Butow,
author of Japan's Decision to Surrender.[22]
Especially significant was the view expressed by Secretary
of War Stimson, as stated in his autobiography, co-authored
with McGeorge Bundy. "It is possible," said Bundy, "in the
light of the final surrender, that a clearer and earlier
exposition of American willingness to retain the Emperor
would have produced an earlier ending to the war. . . . But
in the view of Stimson and his military advisers, it was
always necessary to bear in mind that at least some of
Japan's leaders would seize on any conciliatory offer as an
indication of weakness."[23]
At another point Bundy writes: "Only on the question of the
Emperor did Stimson take, in 1945, a conciliatory view; only
on this question did he later believe that history might
find that the United States, by its delay in stating its
position, had prolonged the war."[24]

Obviously, if the Grew -- Stimson approach had been tried
and proved successful, the use of the atomic bombs would
have been unnecessary and could have saved no lives. It
might have brought the war to the same conclusion, possibly
even before the atomic bombs were dropped and before the
Soviet Union had time to enter the war against Japan.

Strategy Number Two: Intensified
Bombing and Blockade Until November 1, 1945

This scenario is based on the assumption that the war
might have continued with the use of conventional weapons
during the period from early August until the Japanese
surrendered, and that capitulation would have occurred prior
to November 1, 1945 -- the date of the scheduled invasion of
Kyushu. During this period, the United States would have
tightened its sea blockade and intensified its air
bombardment. This hypothesis brings into bold relief the
deteriorating condition of Japanese defenses and the
accumulation of evidence that Japan would have surrendered
before the scheduled date for the invasion of Kyushu, even
without the atomic bomb. The following excerpts from postwar
official reports make this clear:

Admiral Ernest King, Commander-in-Chief,
United States Fleet:

"[In the final thirty-six days of the war] the
forces under Admiral Halsey's command had destroyed or
damaged 2,804 enemy planes, sunk or damaged 148 Japanese
combat ships, sunk or damaged 1,598 enemy merchant ships,
destroyed 195 locomotives and damaged 109 more. In
addition, heavy blows had been struck at industrial
targets and war industries, effectively supplementing the
bombings by B-29'(s. This impressive record speaks for
itself and helps to explain the sudden collapse of
Japan's will to resist."[25]

General of the Army George C. Marshall, Chief of
Staff:

"During July the super-bombers had steadily increased
the scale of their attacks on the Japanese homeland. From
the Marianas bases the B-29's averaged 1,200 sorties a
week. Okinawa airfields which now occupied almost all
suitable space on the island began to fill with heavy
bombers, mediums and fighters which united in the aerial
assault on the Japanese islands, her positions on the
Asiatic mainland, and what was left of her shipping.
Fighters from Iwo Jima swept over the Japanese islands,
strafed Japanese dromes and communications and gave the
superbombers freedom of operation. The Third Fleet
augmented by British units hammered Japan with planes and
guns, sailing boldly into Japanese coastal waters. The
warships repeatedly and effectively shelled industries
along the coasts. . . . These mighty attacks met little
opposition."[26]

The devastation of Japan prior to the bombing of
Hiroshima was confirmed by the Strategic Bombing Survey
established by Stimson to assess the effects of the massive
air attacks. The 1,000 members of the Survey interviewed
hundreds of Japanese military officers, government
officials, political and economic leaders, and others, and
reviewed great numbers of Japanese records. At the end of
this lengthy process, the conclusion of the Survey was:

Based on a detailed investigation of all the
facts and supported by the testimony of the surviving
Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion
that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all
probability prior to I November 1945, Japan would have
surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been
dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even
if no invasion had been planned or
contemplated.[27]

These and other reports were available to Stimson,
Churchill, Truman, and others when they wrote their memoirs.
Yet they showed no evidence of having paid any attention to
those records. The mass of data presented by the Survey and
its conclusions are simply not compatible with the clear
implication of these men that without the use of the atomic
bombs as many as a million American casualties or,
alternatively, a half-million deaths might have had to be
paid in battles in the heartland of Japan. It seems probable
that what these memoirists meant to convey was that, at the
time of the decision, they thought that this number of
losses could be avoided by the use of atomic weapons,
although later information made them realize that Japan was
closer to surrender than earlier U.S. intelligence
assessments had led them to believe. But that is not what
they said. They had a responsibility to make this
distinction clear. Even had they done so, however, many
unanswered questions and inconsistencies would have
remained.

According to this second scenario, based on information
available after the war's end, American casualties would
have been, at most, in the low thousands, with the number of
deaths almost certainly not exceeding 5,000 and probably
considerably less. So great was the destruction of Japanese
air power that American aircraft losses from bombing
missions over Japan dropped from a high of 5.7 percent in
January to 0.4 percent in July.[28]
Naval losses would also have been extremely light, judging
from the reports of Admiral King. Since Army ground forces
would not have been engaged at all, losses would have been
either zero or negligible.

In the light of General Marshall's and Admiral King's
assessments of the extremely weak condition of Japan during
the last months of the war, and in view of the conclusions
of the Strategic Bombing Survey that Japan would in all
probability have surrendered before November 1, 1945, and
considering the shock to Japan of the Soviet declaration of
war on August 8, this second scenario seems, in retrospect,
to have been the more probable one in the event the atomic
bombs had not been available or had deliberately not been
used.

It can only be a matter of conjecture as to how long it
would have taken Japan to surrender after the Soviet Union's
declaration of war, and as to how many casualties would have
been inflicted on Japanese forces and civilians pending
final peace terms, but the evidence strongly suggests that
surrender would have come quickly. The shock and
demoralization of Japanese military officers that resulted
from the Soviet attack was similar in effect to the
Hiroshima bomb, in the opinions of Lt. General Seizo Arizue,
chief of G-2 of the Japanese Army General Staff, and Genki
Abe, Home Minister in the Japanese Cabinet, according to
their postwar statements.[29]
Especially since the Emperor was then taking an
unprecedented role in seeking a prompt end to the war, it
seems highly probable that, even by itself, the sudden
Soviet assault would have shifted the Japanese government's
intense surrender efforts from communicating with the
Soviets to negotiating with the United States via
Switzerland, as occurred after the double shock of the
atomic bombings and the Soviet entry into the war.

Key U.S. officials not only wanted to save American
lives, but, as Army historian Louis Morton observed, ". . .
some responsible officials feared the political consequences
of Soviet intervention and hoped that ultimately it would
prove unnecessary. "[30]
Any tentative peace offer made to the United States through
Switzerland, therefore, would have been immediately pursued
and concluded, especially since the Secretaries of War and
Navy, Stimson and Forrestal, and their Joint Staff Planners
had come to the conclusion in April that a statement to
Japan that they could retain their sovereignty -- and by
implication their Emperor -- might in their dire
circumstances, end their resistance.

Because relations between the United States and Japan
have followed so cordial a path for four decades, there has
been an effort, especially of late, to make it appear that
if the two atomic bombings had not occurred, the Japanese
people would have suffered massive slaughter or starvation,
or both,. in an Allied invasion of Honshu, and that, from
the Japanese standpoint, the bombings might properly be
viewed as benign. This thesis was advanced two years ago by
Dr. Taro Takemi, president of the Japanese Medical
Association, and by Edwin O. Reischauer, former U.S.
Ambassador to Japan.[31]
The evidence presented here, plus evidence from Butow's
Japan's Decision to Surrender,[32]
makes their argument seem extremely questionable.

Strategy Number Three: A November 1945
Attack on Southern Kyushu

This scenario assumes that, despite a tight naval
blockade and extremely heavy bombing for three months after
early August, as well as critical losses against Soviet
armies in Manchuria and possibly Korea, the Japanese still
would have wanted to hold out and would have been able to do
so, and that they would not have surrendered until after the
invasion of Kyushu, scheduled to begin on November 1, 1945.
This scenario further assumes that the invasion would have
proceeded according to the War Department's plan and that
within thirty days the United States would have won the
battle for southern Kyushu. This represents the most
pessimistic of the possibilities envisioned by the Strategic
Bombing Survey.

The meeting at which Truman gave his approval to the
invasion plan, if that became necessary, was an important
one. It was convened on June 18, 1945, with the Joint Chiefs
of Staff, the Secretaries of War and Navy, the Assistant
Secretary of War, and Admiral Leahy, the President's
personal chief of staff. This was the same meeting at which
Admiral Leahy unsuccessfully advocated modifying the
unconditional surrender doctrine to permit the retention of
the Emperor. Following are the other salient points of the
meeting.[33]

First, the presentation by General Marshall related
solely to OLYMPIC, the plan to invade Kyushu. Neither
then nor at any other time did the Joint Chiefs discuss
with Truman a plan for the invasion of Honshu.

Second, all projections of losses were in terms of
casualties. No figures on expected deaths were presented
or discussed. According to the minutes, casualties for
the first thirty days on Kyushu, by the end of which U.S.
forces would have a firm hold on the southern half of
Kyushu (separated from the north by a mountain range),
with full control of its various airfields, "should not
exceed the price we have paid for Luzon" -- 31,000
casualties.[34]
(Later reports showed that the Luzon casualty figures
included 7,765 deaths, a ratio of 25 percent deaths,
somewhat higher than the 20 percent ratio in 1944 and
1945 in the Pacific.) When questioned by Admiral Leahy
about whether the 31,000 estimate might be too low in
view of the reportedly heavier than expected casualties
on Okinawa, Admiral King replied that he thought that a
realistic casualty figure for Kyushu would lie somewhere
between the Luzon losses of 31,000 and the estimated but
not finally determined Okinawa casualties of 41,700. The
final count for Okinawa casualties turned out to be
65,631, of which 7,374 were deaths.[35]
This confirmed Admiral Leahy's information about the much
heavier casualties than expected on Okinawa, but not a
greater number of deaths. Upon the unanimous
recommendation of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Truman gave
his approval to the plan.

Third, the War Department plan, and General
Marshall's comment on it, suggested strongly that by the
time southern Kyushu was in Allied hands, Japan would
surrender.

Fourth, according to the minutes, "The record of
General MacArthur's operations from I March 1944 through
1 May 1945 shows 13,742 U.S. killed compared to 310,165
Japanese killed, or a ratio of 22 to 1."[36]

Fifth, President Truman expressed the hope, at the
meeting's end, that there would be a possibility of
preventing an Okinawa from one end of Japan to the other,
emphasizing his expression of concern, when the meeting
was called, to minimize American casualties.

Finally, the meeting did not reveal or discuss any
alternative to the invasion plan.

Top naval and air corps officers believed that Japan
could be forced to surrender through the strangulation of
its military machine and its economy by naval blockade and
air bombardment. That view was not presented at this meeting
because these officers had been persuaded by their Army
ground force counterparts to think of the conquest of
southern Kyushu as the final military engagement in such a
strangulation strategy, to be accomplished at a tolerable
cost -- 31,000 casualties, 7,000 -- 8,000 deaths, the price
paid for Luzon. The discussion would have been very
different if the War Department had sought preliminary
approval of the invasion of Honshu, which both the Navy and
the Army Air Force regarded as sure to be more expensive in
human losses than was necessary.

If this "worst-case scenario" had occurred -- that is, if
the atomic bomb had not worked or had not been used, and if
Japan had somehow held out beyond November 1, 1945, and if
the successful invasion of southern Kyushu had been carried
out, and if the Russians had entered the war in August (as
they did) and engaged the Japanese in Manchuria and Korea,
and if at that point the Japanese had surrendered -- then a
reasonable estimate of American deaths almost surely would
have been not more than 20,000 and probably less than 15,000
(5,000 for air and naval losses before the invasion, not
more than 10,000 during the invasion of Kyushu, and an added
allowance of 5,000 for unforeseen losses).

Strategy Number Four: A Spring 1946
Invasion of Honshu

The fourth strategy is the one we began with -- that
which Stimson, Churchill, and Truman implied would have been
the only alternative to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.
It is based on the following assumptions:

That even after the defeat of Japanese forces on
southern Kyushu, and after seven months of
ever-increasing bombing of Japan during the fall and
winter of 1945 -- 46, including three months of bombing
and strafing from the close-in airfields of Kyushu, Japan
could and would have held out;

That after the devastation of Japan's navy, merchant
marine, and air force, Japan could and would have held
out;

That after seven months of progress by Soviet armies
that, in all probability, would have occupied all of
Manchuria and Korea and been poised and eager to aid in
the assault on Honshu from the west and north, Japan
would still have continued to struggle;

That after the demolition of Japan's industrial
capacity, essential to replace lost military equipment,
it would have had the wherewithal to inflict extremely
heavy casualties on an enemy that was superbly equipped
and that completely controlled the air over the
battlefields;

That the Japanese people, a large portion of whom
would by then have been at or near the starvation level,
would have been able and willing to continue to support
the war;

That a nation whose government and Emperor were
seeking, almost frantically, in July 1945 to work out
terms of surrender would have kept fighting under
hopeless circumstances;

And finally, that such a devastated and thoroughly
beaten nation, whose armies in the Pacific had taken
losses of 22 times as many deaths as they had inflicted
on General MacArthur's forces during their march toward
Japan in 1944 and 1945, could have inflicted some 500,000
deaths -- 70 percent more than the 292,000 the United
States armed forces lost in all of World War II -- on the
world's best-equipped army, navy, and air force.

In addition to these assumptions, this scenario asks that
we believe that after the conquest of Kyushu, at a cost of
under 15,000 deaths and probably no more than 7,000 --
8,000, and after all of the above conditions had been
realized, if President Truman had been presented with a plan
for the invasion of Honshu that was estimated to cost half a
million American deaths and many more Japanese troops, he
would have approved it. It does not seem credible.

The puzzle is especially confounding when one seeks to
determine where Stimson's figure of a million potential
casualties -- the figure he first used in his 1947
Harper's article -- came from. There seems to be no
evidence that any systematic and thoughtful effort was ever
made by the War Department to estimate what it would cost in
casualties or lives if Honshu were invaded. One is forced to
conclude that Stimson's figure must have been an
"off-the-top-of-the-head" estimate made in the early spring
of 1945, before the War and Navy departments realized how
rapid was the deterioration of Japan's capacity to resist,
and then uncritically repeated on various occasions after
the situation had radically changed.

One partial and plausible answer to the puzzle may be
found in an obscure letter that Truman wrote on January 12,
1953, eight days before he left office. In reply to an
inquiry by Professor James C. Cate, a former Air Force
historian then at the University of Chicago, Truman said, "I
asked General Marshall [at Potsdam] what it would
cost in lives to land on the Tokyo plain and other places in
Japan. It was his opinion that such an invasion would cost
at a minimum a quarter of a million American casualties. and
might cost as many as a million, with an equal number of the
enemy. The other military men agreed."[37]
Here, Truman talks of casualties, as Marshall surely would
have. But if we use the Pacific ratio of deaths to
casualties, Marshall is estimating a minimum of 50,000
American deaths and a possibility of as many as 250,000,
quite different from the figures used by Truman two years
later in his autobiography. Marshall's estimate in this
version, it should be noted, was in response to Truman's
specific question as to what it might cost to conduct a
massive invasion of Honshu, and makes no mention of any
discussion as to whether circumstances had by then changed
to make the need for such an invasion very remote and its
advisability even more questionable. One of Marshall's
biographers, Forrest Pogue, believes that by then Marshall
felt sure that Japan would capitulate before such an
invasion could occur.[38]
This was also the view of Brigadier General George A.
Lincoln, one of the Army's top planners.[39]

Perhaps the strangest part of this last scenario is that
the participants in the decision-making process -- those who
wrote their memoirs and used these estimates of lives that
may have been saved by the use of the atomic bombs,
especially Secretary Stimson in 1947 and President Truman in
1955 -- did not seem to realize either its extreme
unlikelihood or the implication that they and General
Marshall would have agreed to such an invasion of Honshu if
they actually believed that a half-million American deaths
might eventuate.

Strangulation of Japan without the invasion of Honshu
would surely have been tried first. Even more likely, Truman
would have acted upon the belief of Grew, Stimson,
Forrestal, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff that the
unconditional surrender doctrine could and should be
tempered enough to negotiate a conditional surrender that
would end the war without an extremely costly invasion --
the same conditional surrender that did end the war on
August 14.

Why Truman used the figure of half a million American
deaths prevented seems something of a mystery at first. He
never approved a plan that would have involved such a mutual
massacre and, beyond any reasonable doubt, he never would
have. In psychological terms, however, such an estimate of
potential American losses is not mysterious. The use of
these figures by Truman and others can be explained by a
subconscious compulsion to persuade themselves and the
American public that, horrible as the atomic bombs were,
their use was actually humane inasmuch as it saved a huge
number of lives. The larger the estimate of deaths averted,
the more self-evidently justified the action seemed.
Exaggerating these figures avoided, in large part, the
awkward alternative of having to rethink and explain a
complex set of circumstances and considerations that
influenced the decision to drop the bombs.

Epilogue

THIS analysis points strongly to the conclusion that the
number of American lives saved as a result of the dropping
of the two bombs was, with a high degree of probability, not
more than 20,000 and was quite probably considerably less.
This is not a judgment as to whether the decision to drop
the bombs was a sound decision on other grounds. What it
says is that the traditional rationale for the decision --
that half a million American lives might have been lost in
an all-out invasion of Japan had the bombs not been
used-simply does not hold up under careful examination, and
that the action must be explained in some other way.

Truman and Stimson offered succinct and corroborating
versions of the basic reason for the decision:

Truman: "Let there be no mistake about
it. I regarded the bomb as a military weapon and never
had any doubt that it should be used. The top military
advisers to the President recommended its use, and when I
talked to Churchill he unhesitatingly told me he favored
the use of the atomic bomb if it might aid to end the
war. "[40]

Stimson: "In 1941 and 1942 they [the
Germans] were believed to be ahead of us, and it was
vital that they should not be the first to bring atomic
weapons into the field of battle. Furthermore, if we
should be the first to develop the weapon, we should have
a great new instrument for shortening the war and
minimizing destruction. At no time, from 1941 to 1945,
did I ever hear it suggested by the President, or by any
other responsible member of the government, that atomic
energy should not be used in the war.'[41]

In the minds of most of the top military and civilian
officials of the government, the decision made by Roosevelt
in 1942 to develop the atomic bomb carried with it the
implicit intent to use it as soon as it became available if
it would shorten the war. There was no need to take into
account other considerations. The question was not whether
the bomb should be used, but how. Its legitimacy to gain a
quick end of the war was taken for granted. That this was
the most powerful single influence in the decision to use
the bomb seems highly probable. Like all the new and more
lethal weapons in history, the atomic bomb was , its own
imperative.

That there were other influential considerations,
however, there can be no question. The most powerful of
these concerned immediate relations with the Soviet Union.
After the successful test of the first bomb on July 16,
while Truman, Churchill, and Stalin were meeting in Potsdam,
it became evident to the American delegation that this new
weapon -- as an actuality, not a scientific forecast -- had
suddenly metamorphosed the strategic situation. From the
Cairo Conference in November and December 1943, President
Roosevelt and General Marshall, and later President Truman,
had been eager to have the Soviets help the United States
defeat Japan. As Truman and Marshall left for Potsdam, it
was still one of their major purposes to gain a renewed
commitment from Stalin that the Soviets would shortly
declare war against the Japanese empire. However, after the
full report of the effects of the atomic blast at Alamogordo
reached Potsdam on July 21, estimating that the energy
generated was the equivalent of 15,000 to 20,000 tons of TNT
or more, American officials realized that they had the means
to end the war very quickly without help from the U.S.S.R.
and before the Soviets could effectively stake a claim for
the joint occupation of Japan, as they had done in Germany,
and otherwise gain political and military advantages in East
Asia that might go beyond the Yalta agreement. Harry Hopkins
had reported on May 28 that Stalin expected to participate
in the joint occupation and administration of Japan. A less
appetizing prospect could hardly be imagined by Truman. In
retrospect, it seems completely understandable that, if the
bomb were to be employed at all, its most advantageous use
would be as early as possible. Truman's concern is well
illustrated by a brief instruction from him to General
Marshall within hours after the United States had accepted
Japan's conditional surrender on August 11. Truman ordered
the War Department to move immediately to occupy a major
Korean port and a major port on the Chinese coast, provided
they could get there ahead of the Soviets.[42]

The combination of the unquestioned legitimacy of the
bomb as a military weapon and the double rationale for using
it quickly -- its shock value to end the war abruptly and
save whatever the number of lives, and its effectiveness in
forestalling the Soviets from what might be large military
gains and corresponding political demands in East Asia --
were almost surely strong influences on Truman when he made
his decision in Potsdam. To fault him, in hindsight, for
that decision would be to ignore the circumstances and
atmosphere that surrounded the decision. The more
appropriate question is:

Why were the circumstances and atmosphere not
conducive to terminating the war without the onus being
placed on the United States for the legitimization of
nuclear weapons in the arsenals of the world?

For nearly four decades, the belief that the Hiroshima
and Nagasaki bombs averted hundreds of thousands of American
deaths -- far more than those bombs inflicted on the
Japanese -- has been a part of accepted history. It was this
judgment, more than any other factor, that seemed to give
legitimacy to the American use of nuclear weapons.
Discovering that this premise was false should help to
stimulate a hard rethinking of other premises of U.S.
nuclear weapons policies.

(c) 1985 by the President
and Fellows of Harvard College and of the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology.